


as morning breaks

by Eissel



Series: Royai Week 2020 [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, More Mentions of Berthold Hawkeye's A+ Parenting, Post-Canon, Reminiscing, Royai Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24644896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eissel/pseuds/Eissel
Summary: Sometimes, when the early morning light breaks over their bed, Roy lets himself stare at her back. At the long history burned there. In those early hours when Central is still and quiet, Roy reminds himself that he doesn’t deserve Riza, not really.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Series: Royai Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778905
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	as morning breaks

**Author's Note:**

> Royai Week Day 3: _**Old Wounds**_
> 
> Despite what that title might have you believe, the songs I was listening to before I wrote this were all power metal or power metal adjacent.

Roy is a morning person, despite what his subordinates might have to say on the subject. He just doesn’t like inane, tedious busywork, which is what his paperwork mostly amounts to anyways. The dry language used doesn’t help either, and it always threatens to make him fall asleep because it’s always just variants of: 

  * _You or someone in your chain of command is needed in X Place_
  * _Please fill out this budget/strategy/performance/what have you review sheet_
  * _Y General requests a meeting with you_
  * _The Z Alchemist has scheduled their evaluation for A day, please note that down and attend the evaluation._



It never changed, and he could do the paperwork in his sleep. Luckily with his soon to be rise to Führer, the paperwork coming his way was now a  _ little  _ more engaging. Now, this didn’t mean that he didn’t still fall asleep whilst reading them because he  _ did _ , only that it was  _ longer  _ before he inevitably loses consciousness.

But, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Roy rose and slept with the sun. Riza said it was proof of his ruined sleep schedule under Berthold Hawkeye’s taskmaster-like teaching. Roy would sheepishly agree, knowing that he couldn’t exactly argue the point when he  _ did  _ stay up on multiple occasions to read this or that book on exothermic reactions, or a translated booklet of Old Xerxian myth, trying to find inspiration for his own alchemic code. 

(He had never realized how useful those late nights of studying would be, not until he was face to face with Berthold Hawkeye’s greatest mistake and masterpiece) 

He shifted in the shared bed, eyes landing on the exposed back of one Riza Hawkeye. His eyes swept over the arches and curves of the tattoo, red and black intertwining on her skin. If he hadn’t been so intimate with the knowledge contained therein and with her, he might have thought she had gotten a tattoo of her own volition. 

He was careful when he touched it, fingers light on her skin, as to not wake her. Riza was notorious for being a light sleeper, even when they were both much younger. His fingers started at the tail of her spine and carefully traced up, sweeping over the alchemical formulas and the symbolic drawings. Even as he traced, the words fell from his lips, unbidden: 

“ _ Veniam peto. _ I apologize.” The words had burned themselves into his memory when he had first seen them that day. Out of everything else inscribed, those stuck out the most, because they had been an admission of guilt, a willful humbling Berthold Hawkeye had granted himself.

It was only two words, but Roy couldn’t help but feel angry whenever he saw them. Who was Berthold to apologize to Riza when he was the one who had done this to her? When he had been the one to neglect her? He didn’t have the right to search for forgiveness. 

But Roy admitted freely that he was being more than a bit of a hypocrite. His hand paused as it brushed against some of the burned patches on her skin, hesitated as it circled around shrapnel injuries. The reason for the first was obvious, he had caused those injuries of his own free will, she had asked, and he had acquiesced. 

There really wasn’t anything he could’ve done. Refused her request and betrayed her trust even more than he already had? No, that wasn’t in the cards. The only option was doing as she asked of him, but delaying until he could no longer. 

So that’s what he had done, burying himself in military procedure so that he would wait until he burned her, he had acted like a coward- 

_ “What is the difference between me and an Ishvalan?”  _ She had asked when confronting him. 

He hadn’t had any words for her, no excuses ready. 

_ “I am a coward Riza.”  _ And it was true to this day. His fingers kept circling around the shrapnel wounds, they were littered around her mid-back, either in small pockmarked groups, or angry red lines that had never quite healed all the way. He recognized his own handiwork when he looked at it.

He might have been famous for his flame alchemy, but he was also often sent to man the artillery. Roy knew those wounds, caused by being too near to a misaimed explosive projectile. He had matching ones on his side, now covered up by the large burn wound he’d given himself when trying to cauterize his side shut during the battle with Lust.

The pockmarks were likely from smaller mortar shells, the sharp lines from frag grenades. He lingered for a few seconds more on these scars, and continued up the tattoo, whispering the lost and hidden away knowledge under his breath as he did so. As he continued up her back, the burn scars became more frequent and expansive. There finally reached a point where the burns were more plentiful than the tattoo. 

He traced the edges of the scar, noting how it spilled over the tattooed sections. The burns were misplaced, at Riza’s request, just enough to where her shoulders would also be affected, just enough to damage her aim just slightly. 

(Not that it did, her aim still remained just as supernatural as it had been before the burn. He regarded it as both a success and a failure, but mostly the latter)

His fingers stuttered again as they reached the top of her spine, where a thin, raised, broken line made contact with the head of the tattoo. It was like a parody of a necklace, becoming thinner and disappearing into her neckline as it reached the back of her neck. He could see it in his mind’s eyes still, the scene of the failed Fuhrer candidate slicing his sword across her neck.

Diagonal motion, one side slightly higher than the other, moving in a jerked motion from the injuries already dealt to him. 

A mistake Bradley would have never made, and a mistake that ultimately saved her life. Still, he couldn’t simply ignore the way she fell, the way she had collapsed, the blood that had pooled around her as she desperately tried to staunch the blood.

_ Like spilled wine _ . 

It had all felt like a surreal fever dream, like a night terror he might have had in Ishval, but he should have stopped having once he had left that hell of white turned red sand and twisted glass. He had watched her almost in slow motion as she had gone silent, had felt his heart pound away in his chest as his mind raced for a way to save her without the stone. 

When she had lazily (almost too lazily) glanced up at the ceiling, Roy had wanted to cry. Riza,  _ brilliant  _ Riza, had found a way out of the situation without either of them having to give up. A smile flittered across his face as he started to trace the scar. 

“ _ My father never considered me very smart, I think that’s because I wasn’t very well suited for alchemy. _ ” Which was bullshit, then and now. Riza had been the one to help him with some of the more complicated parts of his alchemy work when they were younger, it was Riza who could calculate the trajectory of a bullet within the blink of an eye, it was Riza who had managed to find a way out of using the Philosopher’s Stone when she had been injured. 

Roy lifted his fingers off of her neck, and embraced her sleeping form as the sun started climbing higher.


End file.
